


Triple Axel, Triple Loop

by JointExisting



Series: J's Writing Practice Short Stories [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Skating, Angst, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Homesickness, Ice Skating, IronDad and SpiderSon, Irondad, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker is Tony Stark's Biological Child, Phone Calls & Telephones, Sports, Teen Angst, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, alternate universe - figure skating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:34:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27165295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JointExisting/pseuds/JointExisting
Summary: Peter Parker is a world-class figure skater. In fact, he is theFigure Skating Grand Prixgold medallist two years in a row, counting his senior debut. And he’s homesick for New York’s premium ice rink, The Stark Arena, while training away in D.C. at the legendary SHIELD Academy.He isdefinitely notjust homesick for his dad.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: J's Writing Practice Short Stories [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1873600
Comments: 7
Kudos: 44





	Triple Axel, Triple Loop

**Author's Note:**

> A lil’ short-story! I’ve tried to make the skating references brief and descriptive, so as not to alienate anyone – but if you’re confused about anything and it’s stopping you from enjoying the story, please comment!  
> Well comment anyway my ego is fragile lol. I hope you enjoy!

###### 

“Again!”

Peter sprang upwards into a triple rotation, snapping into position with absolute ease. He bent his knees on landing and flung his arms to the sides, before launching into a clean double with just enough time to take a restrained breath in between.

“ _Again!_ ”

Peter swallowed the spit pooling in his mouth and threw himself into the jumps a second time, hopping from two feet to one on landing and causing his balance to give a little to the left—damn muscle memory. _Humpf_. That slipup was definitely not something Peter Parker should do.

A jolt of movement to his left caused him to turn. Beside him, Skye was crouched, shivering, on the floor and, though he had been focused elsewhere, he gathered from her stifled grunts her ankle had probably rolled out on landing— _ooh, that’s painful_. “Skye, you OK?” Peter asked, dropping his arms and turning to look at her as a bead of sweat flicked off her undone fringe. Skye waved him off and pulled herself around to sit on her knees, taking long open-mouthed gulps of air to ward off the visible pain splintering across her exhausted features.

“Again! One-foot landing! And _stick it!_ ”

Peter tossed his head around to the coach yelling military-style commands (but what else would you expect from the SHIELD Academy?), and then back to Skye. He called out, “Uh, Coach Rumlow? Skye-”

The coach’s ice-burnt face turned away from where he was sneering at the littlest kids for their apparent inability to achieve good hip turn-out on one-foot landings without losing their leg position. His thin lips pulled back into a frown and he called time; much of the class fumbled off to grab their water bottles and throw themselves down on the bouncy floorboards to inhale gasps of air. Wearing a sneer, Coach Rumlow stalked across the room and came to a stop in front of the two teenagers, his frown-sneer turning into a full-blown scowl. “What did you do _now_ , Skye?”

“I-I over-rotated, Coach, and landed-”

“Excuses,” Rumlow bit back, furling stubbed fingers into his hips. “This isn’t the first time, Skye. How much do you _really_ want to be here, huh? Because, from where I’m standing, half the time I look at you you’re nagging and distracting Peter.”

“Oh, oh, it-it’s jus-just we had a, uh, we were discussing, uh, the holidays-” Skye tried to reason, finally rising from the floor. She made a long, squealing noise in the back of her throat, raising her shaking foot. The ankle had already begun to bulge.

Peter, with Rumlow’s blind side to him, winced and prepared for the retort before it happened, tensing up—

“You know what I’m hearing?” Rumlow hissed, getting up in the girl’s face. From this close, Peter could see the budding tears catching in Skye’s dark eyelashes. He bit his lip _hard_ and swallowed inaudibly around the lump in his throat as Rumlow lifted an arm and pointed directly towards the door across the room. “Excuses! And you know what I like to see excuses do? _Leave_.”

“Bu-but-” Skye’s throat seized up with emotion and she stumbled away, smashing her face into one hand before taking off at a limping run to grab her bag and bottle. Even before she was out the door, she let out the first audible sounds of a sob.

Peter watched her go, his lips staining into a straight line, and then he turned to look at Rumlow’s disagreeable expression. “Coach. I-I-”

“Peter,” Rumlow said, his face pinched. He snapped his fingers and ordered, “Start at the side of the room. End in the middle of the mat.”

“Yes, Coach,” Peter replied immediately, falling into the sometimes frightening familiarity of his role as _the student_ ; a role he had played the majority of his life. He walked the few steps across the room, pushing down the nervous energy always apparent in his limbs, and waited for his cue as Rumlow called the room forward to ‘ _observe the technique_ ’.

The kids, their eyes wide and medal-hungry, stood in a semi-circle around the coach to watch as Peter bunched his muscles and took off across the room. A second into his step sequence, Rumlow cried out, “Triple axel!” And Peter threw himself into the air, rotated three and a half times, went to land properly but- “Triple loop!” Peter knew it was coming. He kept a knotted position on landing and threw himself into the air for the second part of the combination – another three rotations- “Double loop!” And on that landing he threw himself upward again into two more rotations, coming out into the landing position with the combination complete. He turned out his leg and ankle and raised it parallel to his (also turned-out) hip, flinging his arms to the sides to control his chest position. Importantly, he raised his fingers and pointed them out straight, with a slight curve up—making sure his fingernails were turned to the ceiling.

Out of the corner of his eye, Peter tracked his movements in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors. His position, taught from the age of four, was as perfect as...

As... a squashed down sandwich from Mr. Delmar’s.

So, yeah, _perfect_.

Despite that, though, Rumlow did not praise him, and Peter did not expect him to. Instead, the coach turned to the gaping skaters behind him and said, “And that’s what I want. Collect your bags and bottles, and we’ll watch him do it on the ice.” Rumlow tossed a look over his shoulder, staring hard. “Come, Peter.”

It wasn’t a choice. It never had been. The Coach’s Word is law. Peter nodded stately and picked up his skatebag.

The weight of it was more familiar than a hug from his dad.

###### 

Peter exhaled into the chill winter air of Washington D.C. After the latest of a long line of gruelling sessions, he’d decidedly nipped straight to the nearest coffee establishment and grabbed a hot chocolate for an instant sugar kick and some added warmth. It wasn’t an approved beverage on his diet sheet, but he _needed_ it.

And he was being damn stealthy about it, too—no one had to know, and no one was going to know. Certainly not his sports nutritionist, that’s for sure.

Having settled on a slushy bench to simultaneously chug the drink and nestle into his coat, Peter watched the nearby seasonal ice rink sitting amongst the dripping trees of the park. It was active, but not overly busy—he’d seen it worse. He dropped a hand on to his thigh, feeling for his phone, and took another breath to mentally prepare himself for the regular call about to come through from New York.

While he waited, he sipped the last droplets of his hot chocolate and watched a kid and his father stumble around the ice rink, both with a death’s grip on the barrier. Peter sat up, turning his eyes to the overbearing clouds, and bit back the frustration from his training session—how was he going to tell Dad he’d popped nearly all his jumps as soon as Rumlow was done with their private session? Had Dad already seen the comments floating around the internet with the novice footage someone had shot from the stands?

With that in mind, Peter brushed his thumb across his screen to reread the _Twitter_ thread he had up:

> **@IcePrincess:** _‘This kid’s the US Olympic hopeful? Lol.’_  
>  **@SkateLikeARussian:** _‘That guy from Australia is better than Peter ‘Popper’! The pressure is totally getting to him lmao maybe he should try ice dance. Or curling...’_  
>  **@QuadAxeler:** _‘What do you expect? He’s gotta live up to Tony Stark’_  
>  **@HanyuIsMyBae:** _‘No one can live up to the Iron Skater’_

Peter leant his head back and groaned out loud to the world, “I’m so screwed.”

Those, apparently, were the exact words which caused his phone to buzz in his pocket. Peter slid it out and stared at the ominous ‘ **Dad** ’. He answered on the high note of the _The Imperial March_. “Uh, hey.”

“ _Hey, Pete. Just checking in._ ”

“You check in everyday, Dad,” Peter replied as he ditched his cup in the trashcan beside him and rose to go stand at the barrier of the ice rink, watching the moms and dads with their kids. He remembered to grab his skatebag at the last minute from where he’d stowed it beneath the bench, batting off the layer of watery snow sitting along the zip. “I couldn’t even land a single axel today on the ice,” he babbled, knowing with all likelihood it was already coming. He might as well get this part of the conversation over with.

The silence was damning – until, “ _Everyone has a bad training day, Pete._ ”

“Not when you’re Peter Parker,” Peter replied automatically, perhaps startling a nearby figure skater on the rink who’d just swizzled past him, and who paused, shook their head slowly and carried on with just the slightest glance over their shoulder as they grappled with their phone to take a progress video. Peter rolled his eyes and continued speaking in a quieter voice, “Not when your dad is Tony ‘Iron Skater’ Stark. You do not have a bad day when you’re the reigning US Champion – and the Grand Prix Champion, and the Bronze Medallist at Worlds. Nope. Not allowed a bad day, Dad—You should have seen Rumlow’s face... I could barely manage an upright spin, either... And the ice...” _Ugh, no excuses, Peter; you just had a crap training session - c’mon_...

Tony’s sigh did not faze Peter. They’d had this conversation before. “ _Kid..._ ”

“I hate it here,” Peter interrupted, speaking plainly. “I hate D.C. – just like I hated Moscow, Dad, and Germany. I know Steve Rogers trained here, I _know_ , but-”

“ _And it wasn’t right for him, either_ ,” said Tony and Peter breathed a sigh of relief at the understanding in his dad’s voice. “ _All right. I’ll... call Rumlow and tell him you’re leaving the SHIELD Academy—I’ll need to make up some excuse; the guy’ll cause no end of grief for the PR team..._ ” He went quiet a moment, letting out a long breath, and then continued in a forced happy tone as he changed the subject – well, kinda: “ _So, back to the coach search, then. OK. That’s fine. We’ve been here before—I mean, Lordy, we’ve been here before, Peter, jeez_...”

Peter bit the inside of his cheek. They had been here before – multiple times; Tony had every right to feel ‘done’. Peter had jumped from coach to coach the past two seasons since ‘Aunt’ May had given up coaching after her husband, Ben, was murdered. Peter hadn’t settled well with any coach since, having been so happy with her—having landed his very first quad with her excellent coaching methods and passed all his tests (including those dreaded pattern dances, ugh) with her expert guidance.

Perhaps best of all about skating with May had been the fact he’d actually gotten to live at home in the Tower.

He didn’t realise how much he’d miss that. Not until Germany. And Barcelona. And Moscow. And—

“ _I... can try the_ Toronto Cricket Club _again_ ,” Tony proposed, his fingers already working over the keyboard on the other end of the call.

Peter began shaking his head. He closed his eyes, counted to seven, but still had to say it: “That’s where Harry Osborn trains, Dad.”

“ _Shit_ ,” Tony muttered, his added sigh barely audible. His fingers stilled over the keyboard. The sound of the forestalled clicking of ‘backspace’ was, in itself, the subtle beauty of phone calls. “ _Well, I guess it’s no use if you stay out there, Pete. I’m sure, temporarily, Stephen might be able to make room for you here—and it would be good to have you at home for the holidays_.” He started humming, an uplift in his voice. “ _An’ I could use an extra pair of hands in the lab. It’s win-win, especially with Harley staying in Canada to train_.”

Peter’s mouth dropped open in disbelief. He got to go home? For the holidays? He got to spend Christmas with his Dad and Pepper and Morgan and _maybe_ Stephen and Uncle Rhodey? And _Happy!?_ Tony had to be in a charitable mood to offer that. The sensation of hope buzzed beneath Peter’s skin and he pushed his luck, “Actually, Dad, I think I... I know who I want to coach me through to next season’s Worlds and, uh, Beijing.” Curling his fingers over the strap of his skatebag, taking in a long breath, Peter began to amble around the barrier to the payment booth, steeling himself as he waited for a promising reply.

“ _Really?_ ” came Tony’s interested response—yes! “ _Well, that’s easier, then! Great, kid. Who? Reed Richards? Charles Xavier? Anyone but Hank Pym and Wade Wilson; you know the rule—So, where do they coach? North America? Asia? Europe? I’ll get on to them tonight._ ”

Just as he got to the box, Peter pulled back and let another family dart ahead of him to buy their way into the next session. He tugged at his scarf and nodded to himself, ready and willing to state his every reason for choosing- “Dad. I want you to coach me.”

The silence from the other end of the line was... uncomfortable, to say the least. Peter tried to unknot his stomach as Tony whistled and replied, “ _Pete, we’ve been over this. You know it’s... it’s not that I don’t want to; it’s that I_ physically can’t.”

 _Bullshit_ , Peter thought, but he said, “Dad, please-”

“ _Pete, you know I only coach kids_.”

“I’m a kid.”

“ _You’re_ my kid. _It’s also not exactly_ done _in the skating world, Pete; you_ know _that_.”

Peter bit back the retort he wanted to give – “ _Hank Pym coaches his daughter!_ ” – and instead he settled on, “When did you start caring what the skating world thought?” He pinched his expression, lips dragging down into a grimace.

“ _I don’t know, kid_ ,” Tony replied, “ _I_ -” A noise in the background interrupted him, and he said something away from the phone – something which sounded distinctly like ‘Peter’ and ‘not working out’ and ‘coming home’ and ‘coach him’ and ‘not happening’. _Ouch_. Tony came back on the call a moment later. “ _OK, kid, I- I gotta go. So, I’ll get in touch with Stephen and get you a ticket home, OK? I’ll try and make it a night flight—probably tomorrow, though_.”

Peter let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding in, “OK, Dad. Thanks.”

“ _What are ya doin’ now?_ ” The contentment in Tony’s voice, while forced, was at least good-humoured.

“I’m just... gonna go skating, I guess – then head back to the apartment and do some homework.”

“ _All right, kid_ ,” Tony replied and Peter could practically see him nodding while forcing that stupid grin he only used when Pepper was at the doorway and she needed something and that meant Tony had to go now—not in ten minutes after he was done talking to his only son, but _now_. “ _Order some takeout tonight, OK? Relax a bit—and don’t get bogged down by a lil’ set back. Training sessions go badly sometimes—so, let’s just focus on getting you sorted with Stephen. I’ll call him- well, after I do this thing for Pep_.”

“OK.”

“ _I love you, Pete_.”

“Yeah, love you, Dad. Bye.” Tony called off first, and Peter pocketed his phone a few seconds later without even a glance at the time. He turned to the booth and walked up, slapping his credit card on the scanner and taking the offered stamp on his hand from the uninterested college student working three jobs to pay rent for her shitty apartment. She was going to be a writer, she’d told Peter once or twice, even though she had never written a thing that wasn’t for school and was always playing some shit mobile game on her phone. She did not care a cinch about skating either, so their conversations were primarily focused on her and her problems. Well, other people have problems, too _Cynthia_.

... Maybe he was in a not-so-good mood right now.

Peter regarded the **NO JUMPING** sign with torn confidence as he made for the warm-up area they’d set up under a blue tent with a sparse amount of holes. Peter nodded to the skate hire manned by a retired hockey forward. The man, in his late forties, and who had ‘seen it all’ according to himself, had grown used to Peter coming every day to wind down after a proper skating session and didn’t often bother him about his speeds over the ice, so long as Peter was careful.

While normally side-tracking for a quick chat, Peter decided that was probably not a good idea with his current mood as was. Instead, he chucked himself down on one of the worn benches and toed off his damp sneakers, setting them to one side before dragging his skatebag across to take out the worn-down pair of skates—they were becoming a clutch, really, and he should change them. He probably would when he got home – when he had some time with Dad; maybe they’d make them together.

Peter flicked his eyes up and noticed a young girl across from him sitting on the bench, waving her plastic blue skates back and forth as she stared open-mouthed at him and his custom _STARKs_ (all capitals, except the last ‘s’). Peter shot her a small, strained smile as he slid his feet into his boots, the insides still slightly wet with sweat. He began to tie them, lace over lace, keeping the arch of his foot loose and tightening in at the ankle until he definitely had no lift on it. The actions were automatic, had been since he was six, and the bite of the lace on his fingers was almost pleasant.

It took him a second to realise someone was speaking to him.

Or, rather, about him.

“He’s a figure skater, Jen,” said the mother(?) of the little girl, a smile coming over her time-worn features. “You know when you watch those people on the television? Doing all those tricks on the ice? The _twizzles_ and the-... the jumps? That’s what he does. That’s why his skates are different to ours, honey.”

“Whoa!” Jen, the girl, exclaimed, and Peter gave her and her mother(? Grandmother?) a gentle smile; it was approaching sad, he realised a little too late, and looked back to his skates.

He’d forgotten to replace his soakers with his hard guards. Shit. _Rookie mistake_ , thought Peter dismissively as he removed them, starting to wonder whether it was a good idea he went skating at all—no matter how slow and paced he was definitely going to be. He dug through his bag, took out the red and blue guards, and clipped them over his exposed blades, slotting them into place with all the familiarity of the snap and the joint. _Thank goodness for the matting_.

Grabbing out his bottle, Peter rose from the bench and walked across to stand at the barrier, his eyes tracing over the torn-up, leaf-scattered ice as the last few skaters from the previous session left, their knees wobbling, and the small Zamboni was released to smooth everything over.

The little girl appeared to his left, her relative with her, and Peter tried not to look at them or the father and son duo who’d just gotten off the ice together and were laughing, chatting. The father sat down, clapped the bench beside him, and the son hurled himself down with a harsh huff, as though he really was out of breath. The father’s face fell and he unzipped his pocket, taking out an inhaler. He handed it over and instructed, before beginning to untie the ratty laces from his son’s blue skates.

Peter blinked a few times, looking back to the ice, and slumped forward on to the barrier, burying his nose into the nook of his elbow as he watched the ice settle—the marshal asked for everybody to wait for the signal, obviously wanting the ice to dry for just a moment. Peter breathed in the familiar smell of chemicals in the water layer, smiling against his sweater as he lifted his head just enough to inhale and exhale.

Troubling himself to take one last glance at the boy and his father, Peter watched them leave – hand-in-hand, walking straight towards the coffee establishment Peter had gone to. He imagined them settling in the window seats, two creamy hot chocolates to drink, and laughing as the father took photos and reminisced about their little trip to the skating rink.

Peter missed that—missed bouncing around the reception of his dad’s rink, waiting for him to get off duty for a few minutes so they could go over his homework sheets sent over from the local primary, or maybe they’d head off down to the ice cream bar and Peter would spend the next two hours laying about the stands complaining of tummy aches. Tony would laugh and tell him it was his fault, and Peter would say it wasn’t, and-

The marshal gave the signal suddenly, and Peter’s thoughts ground to a halt. He patiently allowed the other people – most of whom were in blue skates – to unsteadily step onto the ice first, waiting for his moment. A young woman in cheap white skates – the cloth-ish ones; they were... very unsafe – ushered him on in front of her. “Thank you,” Peter murmured, ever polite, unhooking one skate guard from his blade to step on to the ice with.

“Oh!” she cried out, “You’re still wearing...”

Peter held his other skate up away from the ice, reaching back to slowly take off the other guard and swing it. He returned to the barrier, reaching over the side to place them carefully in the corner. “Sorry, I tend to do that,” Peter said, giving an awkward chuckle at the awed expression on her face. He’d learnt it from Dad’s skating days:watching documentaries into the early hours of the morning in his room with the sound off and the subtitles on. That was how he learnt to read, too.

He left without hearing her reply, if she gave one at all, and looped the rink a few times, re-warming his muscles from their slump. From the get-go, it was clear he was – and it should be obvious – the most experienced figure skater on the rink. If he was allowed to, he knew he could draw crowds—not that many of them would probably know him and, in fact, they would be more likely know him from Tony’s press conferences, and lingering in the background of interviews, and maybe from the few times Tony had shown him off to the world’s press at various ages, than from the ice rink.

Peter had a very special hatred for the media circus. He knew it was just a job at the end of the day to pay the bills—he understood those things, having lived briefly with his mother before Tony won full custody of him—but he hated how often he, as a kid, would have been loitering around the Tower or the rink and, suddenly, there was a camera and—wait, what the hell was—

“Smile for the camera, kid!”

Oh, _shit_.

Today was definitely not his day.

And tomorrow couldn't come soon enough.

As the camera's flash hit him, Peter shielded his eyes - dammit; sensitivities - and went down hard on his hip with a floundering gasp. His thoughts ground to a halt as he sat there in a puddle on the ice, as the camera flashed in his face a few times, no doubt catching the reflection of the clouded sky in his tears.

Peter scrambled to his blades and sped across to the exit, an arm across his face as he grabbed for his phone to call home--to call his Dad. The answering machine, as he cried silent tears into his sleeve and wrangled with his hard guards, was in itself deafening - _"Howdy. You called, so you probably know who I am. You've reached my answering machine and, obviously, I can't take your call. Don't leave a message; I don't listen to them."_

Peter left a message because there was no other way for him to say it--because Tony couldn't hear him say it, because Peter couldn't say it to him: "Dad! Dad! I-I want to come home! Dad, please, pick up! I-I... I need you- I need my inhaler Dad... I..." Peter inhaled. "Dad..."

The camera flashed again. _Oh dear_ , thought Peter. This would be a lot of work for the PR Team to clear up.

**Author's Note:**

> A Conversation w/ my on-off Beta
>
>> **Richard-not-his-real-name:** Hey so I haven’t gotten a chapter in a while for Piano Man or The World was Wide Enough. [Or that Good Omens skating one]  
>  **Me:** Well here’s the thing  
>  **Richard-not-his-real-name:** no don’t let there be a thing I don’t like when there’s a thing  
>  **Me:** I am writing them they’re just taking longer because I can’t do the stress of write – release – write – release w/ college  
>  **Richard-not-his-real-name:** understandable uwu  
>  **Me:** but here’s a short story about Peter being a figure skater because my soul needs angst content and skating  
>  **Richard-not-his-real-name:**
> 
> So, yeah, there’s the thing. If any of you happen to read my other stuff, there’s the delay basically. I’m writing them all at once so they can be finished and released over time. I’m sorry for the delay, but my mental health got really bad and I hated continuously disappointing you guys when I couldn't make my updates. The quality of work also began to suffer, which also caused my mental health to suffer. Once again, I'm sorry.  
> Anyway thank you for reading Triple Axel! I hope you enjoyed it :) stay safe out there!


End file.
